The present invention generally relates to a music/voice discriminating apparatus and to a music/voice processing apparatus which can be used for sound field control related appliances where an expanding feeling sound, an orientation feeling sound, and an articulation feeling sound can be better realized in accordance with a type of sources to be reproduced, for example, in an audition room.
In recent years, the technological tendency is to change from fundamental tone reproduction to fundamental sound field reproduction in an acoustical field. Field control apparatuses for realizing sound fields such as those of a concert hall or the like are being developed. In home audio equipment, car audio equipment and so on, sound field control apparatuses are provided for reproducing using a multichannel speaker sound effects such as initial reflection sounds and reverberation sounds which are added to inputted acoustical signals. Some of these apparatuses have a source discriminating function, which can automatically adjust in a maximum value the level of the sound effects in accordance with the source type (for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 64-5200).
As one example of the above described conventional source discriminating function, the size of the difference signal amplitude of the L, R two channel signals to be stereo-transmitted is calculated so as to set the level of the sound effect in inverse proportion to the difference. Namely, in the case of a source having a low reverberation component at the time of music reproduction, relatively more sound effect is added as the difference signal amplitude becomes small. In the opposite case, relatively less sound effect is added less.
However, in the conventional construction, when a stereo music broadcast changes to a monoral voice such as news or the like during, for example, FM broadcast reception, the difference signal of the L, R signals becomes almost zero and is judged as dry music with the reverberation components being extremely low. The added sound effects becomes of a maximum level, with a problem arising in that the speech intelligibility is lowered.
Further, during stereo music reproduction, the amplitude values of the L, R difference signals are normally varied, for example, at each silent pause in the music, with a problem arising in that the sound effect level can drastically vary in a single musical piece, resulting in an unnatural sound.